The Education Ministry's noncompliance with a 2004 High Court of Justice ruling that ultra-Orthodox high schools should not get government funding if they do not adopt the state's core curriculum threatens the rule of law, the High Court said yesterday.

…The Israel Religious Action Center and the Secondary School Teachers Association, which petitioned the High Court to get the Education Ministry to comply with the earlier ruling, said yesterday that they were considering filing another petition protesting the law passed last week.

The High Court went so far as to say that the law could not succeed "from the point of view of equality, and it will be struck down."

According to Procaccia, "the aim of the core curriculum is to develop among students basic knowledge, proficiency and values of a communal life which will enable each one to function independently in a pluralistic and Israeli society.

The core curriculum is based on a broad common denominator, on humanist, universal values and on the fact that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state."

Although the court states it can do nothing because the law has already passed, this monumental verdict clears the way for future petitions by the Israel Religious Action Center and the Secondary School Teachers Association.

Procaccia's statements indicate that the prohibition against funding schools that do not teach the core curriculum is constitutional.

For example, she wrote that the core curriculum reflects the common values of all students in Israel, and teaching it is a necessary condition for government funding. If the High Court receives a petition against the law, these statements will be pivotal. It seems the fight has just begun.

These educational institutions, meaning the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva high schools, will receive 60% of the funding per student given to regular high schools, even though they will not be teaching the core curriculum.

They will not be able to receive funding beyond this from the Education Ministry, but will receive additional funding from their municipalities.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv of the [Israel Religious Action Center] said that "the bill officially negates the natural expectation that the Education Ministry will be involved in the curriculum studied by 50,000 students.

Rather than evolving and becoming more involved in ultra-Orthodox education following the High Court of Justice's discussion, the State is becoming irrelevant to everything that's happening with these students."

Referring to the government's support of the bill he said,

"For the first time in the history of Israel, the State is going to relieve itself of the responsibility over thousands of students, and become apathetic to the fact that they will not receive basic life skills, or be able to support themselves in the future."

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men who study in ultra-Orthodox courses are required to begin the secular subjects from scratch and to pass matriculation and psychometric exams within one year.

…Education Minister Yuli Tamir, who supported the new law, said yesterday that the main effort in the ultra-Orthodox community must be made after high school in vocational training courses, rather than by forcing them to study secular subjects in high school.

Considering that one-quarter of school-age children in Israel are ultra-Orthodox, the new law depriving them of education will have far-reaching social significance.

Ultra-Orthodox society has grown thanks to natural increase, and in the future, it will be even more dependent on the secular to support it. And the ultra-Orthodox political parties, whose power will obviously grow as well, will be able to demand, and receive, ever greater public funding.

Orthodox rabbis from the United States and Israel intend to set up an Orthodox court system as an alternative to Israel's rabbinical courts and to the rigorous norms for conversion to Judaism imposed on U.S. rabbis.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin:

"This rabbinical court system is required to deal with conversions and divorce, two issues whose handling by the Supreme Rabbinical Court is appalling.

We plan to set up several branches, including in Israel, or operate a mobile rabbinical court that will hold hearings in various places around the world as required."

"If they don't accept our conversions, we'll go to the High Court of Justice," said Riskin. "In any case, I'd rather be part of a court system that reflects my belief, even if it is not accepted by the Chief Rabbinate."

"The prime minister's comments are an important first step in restoring confidence in the Conversion Authority, but words are not sufficient," he said.

ITIM has received hundreds of phone calls in the past two months, Farber said, both from those concerned about their conversion status and from individuals hesitant to convert.

In the next few weeks, Olmert wrote, the Conversion Authority would "begin to tackle the complexities of this issue," and hoped to see "concrete results" by the time of the UJC General Assembly in November.

So the main obstacle to implementing the [Gavison-Medan] proposal - and in effect, any solution to the complicated problems of conversion, women denied a get, and the other issues included under the heading "relations between religion and the state" - is the political veto of the ultra-Orthodox parties.

Here the ball is in the secular public's court. Its willingness to accept coalitions in which the Haredim are not just satisfied with guaranteeing their rights (and even with receiving extra benefits), but demand for themselves a veto right that promotes a stringent halakhic approach, is in the end what is harming the farmers, the converts and women denied a get.

Religious Zionism today has a significant branch that is willing to deal with these issues courageously, and to propose reasonable solutions. But if the secular public continues to accept the Haredi coalition veto, there will be no chance to implement any of them.

Ever since the conversion crisis erupted nearly three months, the war of words between religious Zionists and haredim has grown increasingly fiery, threatening to drive a stake right through the heart of Orthodox Jewry.

Indeed, one of the consequences of the ruling by the haredi-dominated Rabbinical High Court retroactively annulling conversions performed by religious Zionist Rabbi Haim Druckman was to swing open the floodgates of hateful intra-Orthodox rhetoric.

A husband who refused to divorce his wife was ordered to pay her NIS 550,000 in compensation for the mental anguish he caused her.

Moreover, though the wife held a rabbinic ruling ordering her husband to grant her a get - a religious divorce - the Jerusalem Family Court ruled that a husband's refusal to do so could entitle the woman to compensation. That applied even if the wife lacked a religious ruling.

"It would seem that the civil courts have finally begun to realize that the rabbinical courts take too long in enforcing divorces, and have decided to treat the women justly," the woman's attorney, Ifat Frankenbourg of the Center for Women's Justice, told Ynet.

According to Frankenbourg, in many cases women do not receive their divorce because the rabbinical courts refrain from forcing it upon the husband.

"This is a huge step taken by the civil courts in order to compensate for the rabbinical courts' failure to solve divorce conflicts," she concluded.